Browsing: Business and Economics

A Brief History On August 21, 1888, American inventor William Seward Burroughs of New York patented the first successful American adding machine, a device that remained in service until superseded by electronic calculators in the 1970s.  While mechanical adding machines date back long before that of Burroughs’s, his machine was definitely an improvement and was made to even print results. Digging Deeper Other old fashioned tech that also worked rather well is the slide rule, a computing device that could perform all sorts of mathematical operations almost as quickly as an electronic calculator.  Invented in the 1600s by William Oughtred,…

A Brief History On August 20, 1962, the NS Savannah set out on her maiden voyage, a trip from Yorktown, Virginia to Savannah, Georgia, through the Panama Canal and on to Hawaii.  This nuclear-powered cargo ship, the first of its kind, was built in New Jersey at a cost of $47 million. Digging Deeper The ship itself only cost $18 million, but adding the nuclear reactor and fuel added a whopping $29 million to the price, paid by the US government.  An allegedly “civilian” nuclear-powered icebreaker had been built by the USSR in 1957, and in all, only four nuclear-powered…

A Brief History On August 17, 1945, George Orwell published his novella, Animal Farm, a cautionary tale that amounts to “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!”  An allegory about the siren song of communism, Animal Farm was proven right when almost all the communist countries in the world reverted to at least somewhat of a market system. Digging Deeper Other authors have foretold the future, such as Jules Verne with his tales of submarines and space travel.  Orwell himself struck again with Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, forecasting our descent into universal surveillance of the population and the…

A Brief History On July 22, 1942, due to wartime demands on gasoline, the US instituted a national rationing program for this fuel.  World War II saw many items rationed, including fuels, tires, and even cars.  But it gets worse! Digging Deeper World War II begat the issuance of ration stamps, resulting in black market and counterfeit stamps. Dog food in cans disappeared, and toothpaste tubes were limited.  A national 35 mph speed limit was instituted, coffee availability was cut in half, shoes, bicycles, rubber products, many foods, coal, firewood, and medicines such as penicillin were rationed.  Silk was rationed,…

A Brief History On July 17, 1984, President Reagan signed The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, requiring all states to raise the legal age for buying alcoholic beverages from 18 to 21.  The penalty for states that did not comply would be a reduction in Federal highway funds. Digging Deeper In the Vietnam War era, a shift in public opinion regarding the age when an American could be considered an adult came about largely based on the argument that if an 18 year old could fight and possibly die for his country, then surely that same 18 year…